Bad People. Anti-Semitism in South America -- widespread and rarely explored

Anti-Semitism in South Amerika is an area that is still not sufficiently researched. All the more welcome is a recently published Brazilian anthology that describes the phenomenon in its frightening dimensions, mainly in Latin America.

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Bad People

 

Anti-Semitism in South America — widespread and rarely explored.

 

Klaus Hart

 

Anti-Semitism in South Amerika is an

 

area that is still not sufficiently researched. All the more welcome is

 

a recently published Brazilian anthology* that describes the phenomenon

 

in its frightening dimensions, mainly in Latin America.

 

Many Latin Americans carry official first names like Hitler, Himmler

 

and Eichmann. In the phonebook of Sao Paulo one can find, in all

 

seriousness, the name "Himmler Hitler Göring Ferreira Santos."

 

Again and again synagogues are attacked; the number of anti-Semitic and

 

neo-Nazi websites has increased alarmingly; Jewish personalities often

 

receive death threats. For the first time now, an anthology of 740

 

pages is available, in which experts approach the phenomenon of hatred

 

against Jews in North and South America from different angles. Editor

 

and co-contributor of the anthology is Latin America"s leading

 

anti-Semitism researcher, Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro, who has already

 

published numerous books on the topic. Carneiro teaches at the

 

University of Sao Paulo and is currently building a virtual archive

 

about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in cooperation with the Yad

 

Vashem Institute in Jerusalem. In addition, she develops urgently

 

needed educational materials for Brazil"s teachers — materials that

 

should have been available for decades.

 


The anthology describes anti-Semitism in Canada and the United States

 

as insignificant and hardly threatening, hence it is considered in

 

relative brevity, quite unlike the giant country of Brazil and its

 

neighbor, Argentina, that have the largest Jewish communities in Latin

 

America and are increasingly exposed to neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism.

 

One can"t help being reminded of the bomb attack on the Jewish

 

Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1994, in which 85 people were

 

killed. This attack and other incidents lead to harsh security measures

 

at synagogues, also in Brazil. Brazilian rabbis insist that the Iberian

 

culture is still marked by strong anti-Semitism, and that Spain and

 

Portugal who colonized the Latin American countries, deeply instilled

 

Christian anti-Judaism as well as racist anti-Semitism, with all its

 

stereotypes and prejudices in South American society.

 

A Luxury Edition of "Mein Kampf"

 

Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro states that today, anti-Semitism in Brazil

 

and other North and South American countries usually disguises itself

 

as anti-Zionism, as hatred of Israel. "But if one looks closely, it

 

goes against the Jews, it is nothing else but deep-seated, traditional

 

anti-Semitism." Especially in Brazil, Argentina and Chile, the

 

anti-Jewish mentality is strong and articulates itself politically.

 

Anti-Semitic concoctions from the Nazi era are appearing in new

 

editions. In Brazil itself the translation of Hitler"s Mein Kampf in a

 

luxury edition is selling out quickly. Since the 19th Century the major

 

racial theories from Germany and France were adopted in Brazil by

 

government circles and propagated by renowned intellectuals. "One

 

wanted a pure race — white, Catholic and non-Jewish."

 


The anthology contains an astonishing study by the historian Silvia

 

Cortez Silva about an icon of Brazilian culture, the writer Gilberto

 

Freyre, whose 100th Birthday in 2000 had been celebrated with official

 

pomp. In his lifetime Freyre had already been honored by many great

 

universities of the world — although in his classic Casa-Grande &

 

Senzala, ["The Mansion and the Slavehut"] he had spread the most evil

 

prejudices against Jews. Silva writes that Gilberto Freyre never

 

concealed what he was thinking about the Jews. "The way he describes

 

the profile and identity of Jews could not be more anti-Semitic." He

 

uses expressions and attributes such as blood sucker, parasite,

 

exploiter, ruthlessness, cunning, Jewish nose, vulture-face — to name

 

only a few. Silva underlined as particularly interesting that such

 

writing passed unheeded in the long years of its reception.

 


Anti-Semitic views are still popular in Latin America. In some

 

Brazilian dictionaries of foreign words the word "Jew" is, in all

 

seriousness, translated as "bad person." Even officially, the dictator

 

and hater of Jews, Getúlio Vargas, is still celebrated as the greatest

 

statesman in the national history of Brazil, though, since 1936, he had

 

outlawed the issuance of entry visas to persecuted Jews by secret

 

decree. "We know of about 10 000 rejected visa applications — and

 

there are still a lot more," states Carneiro. But even worse, many

 

Brazilian Jews were deported to Nazi-Germany.

 

Hundreds of War Criminals

 

The researcher has many anonymous letters of Brazilians with no German

 

background, who denounced Jews who had escaped into the tropical land.

 

"Brazil cooperated in the destruction of the Jews; the Vargas

 

government was complicit in the Holocaust — and Brazilians should

 

finally realize this." Vargas supported the spread of the Nazi Party

 

(the NSDAP) and let Nazi instructors into the country, who

 

indoctrinated students in German schools. "Heil Hitler" was used as

 

salutation. SA and SS songs were sung. In no country outside Germany,

 

did the Nazi Party attract more members than in Brazil. Schools, city

 

squares, streets and even the Plenary Hall of the Brazilian National

 

Congress in Brasilia are named after Filinto Müller¸ the

 

notorious head torturer, chief of the political police of Vargas.

 

Rather late, in 1942, the dictator Vargas broke with Nazi Germany, in

 

order not to remain on the loosing side of WW II, also under pressure

 

from the United States; he then even declared war against Germany. In

 

the anti-Semitic Argentina the Nazi collaborator Juan Domingo Peron,

 

even today still no less popular than Vargas, took his time and broke

 

with Nazi Germany just four weeks before Germany"s capitulation. How

 

after 1945, he permitted the organized entry of hundreds of war

 

criminals into the country, is well documented and well known.

 


Even after the war, anti-Semitic policies were continued in Brazil.

 

Carneiro describes in her classic O Antisemitismo na Era Vargas how,

 

even in 1949, Jews were again denied entry visas by secret decree with

 

the argument that these Jews are survivors of the camps, mentally

 

disturbed people, in whom Brazil has no interest. Brazil"s people of

 

German descent played no small role in this. Thousands of them shared

 

the Nazi enthusiasm, went to Germany, took part in war and destruction

 

of the Jews and returned to Brazil unshorn after 1945, where they

 

continued to cultivate Nazi improprieties. Only now, much too late, one

 

tries to track these people down. Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro accuses

 

Latin American intellectuals, including the Portuguese winner of the

 

Nobel Price for Literature José Saramago, of promoting a new

 

anti-Semitism by comparing the actions of Israel against the Palestinians

 

with the Holocaust, which is absurd, and she observes that Brazil"s government

 

is much more pro-Arabic than pro-Israel.

 

The Case of Stefan Zweig

 

But had the great Jewish writer, Stefan Zweig, not found refuge in

 

Brazil even under dictator Getúlio Vargas? Of course, in order

 

to give the appearance of an unprejudiced, anti-racist nation, certain

 

Jews were allowed into the country: Those that had deposited a high

 

amount of money at the Banco do Brasil, or those from whose image the

 

nation would benefit. The Jewish journalist and biographer of Stefan

 

Zweig, Alberto Dines, revealed the background: "This visa was a

 

precious thing for every Jew who wanted to escape from Europe. And

 

Stefan Zweig just made a deal with the Vargas government — he wrote a

 

book in favor of Brazil in exchange for a permanent visa and received

 

this with incredible ease. Zweig was not a politicized man, he closed

 

his eyes to many things. He invented a paradise." The book, Brazil — A

 

Country of the Future, while totally out of touch with reality, is

 

still a world bestseller, curiously enough, a classic of Brazilian

 

literature. Auf course, not a word can be found about the atrocious

 

Brazilian anti-Semitism under the dictator Vargas.

 

*) Luiza Tucci Carneiro: O

 

Antisemitismo nas Americas. Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 2008.

 

 

 


 

 

 

Copyright: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 11th, 2008. Used with kind permission.

 

Translated from the German by Fritz Voll.